


wonder

by retrosas



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, HoshiHinaWeek, M/M, POV Second Person, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26269456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retrosas/pseuds/retrosas
Summary: wonder (v):to feel surprise, to feel curiosity or doubtYour name is Hoshiumi Kourai; you're six when your flowers begin to bloom, thirteen when you get your soulmate's, and seventeen when you meet him. His soulmark feels fully bloomed on your skin at twenty three.For hoshihinaweek day 3: flowers and tattoos
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Hoshiumi Kourai, Hinata Shouyou/Hoshiumi Kourai
Comments: 1
Kudos: 70





	wonder

**Author's Note:**

> hoshihinaweek day 3: flowers and tattoos
> 
> based on a thread i did for #hoshihinaweek over [ here ](https://twitter.com/sagikaashi/status/1301509738287345669)
> 
> i was just having feelings over hoshihina and decided on a whim to make that thread. when i finished, i had more ideas so i decided to make the whole thing into a short fic. it's my first time ever making something in second person pov so i hope this went well aaa + this was so rushed i just had the inspiration and i dropped all my work to write this lol asjdkngjksdg might proof it some more later on but yis
> 
> hope yall enjoy this! and hope yall can participate in hoshihinaweek too <3

In your world, most people have two sets of flowers. 

The first set is what comes from the buds you’re born with. Everyone comes into the world with flower buds tattooed on their skin; it can be a little dot on one part of your body, or it can span an entire side. All these buds are gray, and only gain color when one turns six.

A few hours into your sixth birthday, you look in wonder as your buds gain color. You watched as the buds began to propagate as they transformed from grey to green and white. Everyday, as you showered, as you changed, you noted the changes they went through. When you saw leaves sprout, you were awed, and when the only change was a shift in position of the budding white flowers, you cheered.

You’re ten when they reach full bloom on your skin. They’re a bushy mess of white and green, and against your skin, lightly tanned from playing outside without the proper sun protection, your flowers stand out. 

They’ve bloomed, but they continue to grow. What was once a simple ring against your skin grew thicker, bushier than it once was. The white grew brighter, and the green more luscious and realistic. The tan of your skin made them pop out even more, and something in you relished at all the gasps and eyes of admiration at your marks. 

You’re twelve when you begin to gain more recognition for your volleyball skills. You’re twelve when your flowers stop increasing. You feel a bit let down, but then you remember that this is not the end yet. 

* * *

In your world, most people have two sets of flowers. 

The first set is what comes from your buds. The second set comes later on in your life, but someone else, your soulmate, is born with them already. They grow on you on the same spot they are on your other half, and yours on theirs. 

There is no time for when to expect your second set. Nobody can answer that yet.

Yours come in at thirteen. You wake up, ready for weekend practice, and change into your jersey. As you remove your shirt, you look at your right shoulder and see the beginnings of a flower blooming. It's something orange, and it has vines extending to your wrist. You stare at it in wonder before looking in the mirror, seeing the dull orange and green reflecting back at you.

When you snap out of your trance, you rush to your mother and show your arm. Your brother, older than you, doesn’t have his second set yet, and you feel the pride of having one-upped him—a feeling that rarely comes and is one you don’t expect anymore, but welcome all the same. 

Your mother beams and makes the biggest lunch and dinner that day, and you bask in the wonder of everyone around you as your arm is exposed for practice. You were at your peak performance from your discovery and the attention. Your brother, with his friends in the other court, grumbles but looks at you with the same wonder, and you go to sleep that night feeling fulfilled in a new way.

A few days later, when your new flowers are more prominent and recognizable, your mom suggests to search up flower meanings. She was always romantic at heart, even if she had the same zeal and tenacity as you, so some of her gushings went over your head. You did, however, understand that flowers have meanings that can give you clues to your soulmate, or your life with them.

You get on the computer and search for your first set of flowers’ meaning first. Then, you search up your second set of flowers. It barely takes you ten minutes to go through the searches to learn your second set of flowers are called a trumpet vine. The internet says it means waiting.

A flower’s meanings can lead you to your soulmate, or tell you about your life with them, you remember your mother say. Yet, you wonder why this is your soul mark. You wonder if it’s because you’re thirteen; the second set of flowers have no set blooming date or length, but most people have full bloomed ones by the time they’re sixteen, which is when people usually start meeting their soulmates.

The thought of soulmates makes you stop your scrolling. You realize that someone out there has, or will have your flowers—white hydrangeas, little bushes of them bunched up together on your legs and feet. 

You know what they look like on you, but you wonder what they look like on somebody else.

You wonder how that somebody else who was born with these flowers, who have seen them in full bloom before you did, must feel. You want to meet them and see how they look, both the flowers and them. Something impatient wells up in you at the thought of waiting. You are thirteen, and the thought of waiting for so long, three years, annoys you. You could be using that time playing volleyball, not thinking or worrying about another person. 

But you think, and think and think and think anyway. You wonder what your second set will look upon full bloom, and you wonder what your soulmate thinks of your hydrangeas. 

You think and think, wonder and wonder, but you are thirteen. Your mind and attention span can only hold so much, juggling friendships, dreams, and volleyball. 

You don’t forget them—you can’t, not when they’re on you, but you don’t give them the same attention as you gave your first set of flowers. There is no daily double checks, no occasional photos to document their changes, no notes on the littlest shifts in color and size.. 

But you notice key changes anyway. You notice that, after a few weeks of being on your skin, the flowers slowly bloom and propagate, as if they were real and sentient. First, the small flowers were solely on your shoulder, and then the next time you decide to _really_ look at them, they’ve increased. They’ve decided to pepper your right arm in small orange flowers and green leaves to the point a small flower has grown past your wrist. when you spike, you see the flower on your hand before you ever see the ball first.

They were small but large in number. That was fine. Your mother called it sunspots as a joke, and something about that seemed just about...right. 

Then they weren’t small anymore; they were large in size, both the flower and the leaves, and large in number. Your arm could honestly look like a tattooed sleeve at this point, and a part of you finds that really cool. Your mother, who has stopped calling them sunspots, thinks the same. 

As much as it is cool, the change is jarring. Suddenly, there's a permanent orange color in your line of sight when you spike and block; before the orange dominating your sight, there were only red, white, green, blue, yellow, and sometimes, brown.

You’re fourteen going on fifteen when you think a bit more seriously about soulmates. You’ve been exposed to girls romanticizing their flowers and making up love stories for you and your designated, but unknown, other half. You’ve heard boys in your locker room offhandedly make remarks about soulmates, wondering why do girls find them so romantic. You’ve come to known the concept of ‘forever,’ and while it’s something you want to stick to volleyball, you wonder if it’s something you want to associate with another living being outside of your family. 

When you’re left behind by the other boys as you stay to practice longer, you eye your exposed knees. You trail your eyes lower, and you see your own hydrangeas wrapped around your ankles. They wrap around like socks, peeking through the gap between the tongue of your shoes and your knee pad that you slid down. 

You look at them silently, and you wonder if anyone has them yet. You wonder if they’ve bloomed as well as the orange flowers on your skin seem to be doing. 

* * *

At sixteen, the flowers on your arm have stopped propagating, but have not fully bloomed. The biggest orange flowers are on your shoulder, going from front to back and stopping right before your shoulder blade. They’re framed by thick, green vines and leaves, not as realistic as your first set of flowers but beautiful nonetheless. The flowers on your arms are larger as well, leaving only a little bit of clean skin between them, the vines, and the leaves. 

In your area, you’ve begun to garner attention for your killer jump and your ability to fly as if you had wings. You preen at the attention, and while you bask in it, you keep improving and pushing yourself. You also relish in how many still underestimate you because of your height and you continue to prove them wrong even harder than before. 

Many call you the little giant and know you by that name, but before the name comes the shock of orange on your right arm, your spiking arm, and the mass of white and green on your legs. Many stare at you wonder all the same. 

You're seventeen when you hear rumors of a new little giant being called from the land of the original little giant himself. You get annoyed, because that title is _yours_ and you worked hard for it, harder than some upstart freshman who used to spike with his eyes closed.

You’re annoyed, but you couldn’t help the rush of excitement and adrenaline coursing through your veins at the possibility of him _really_ being a little giant. Of there being someone else like you and while you brush off comparisons between you and that unknown upstart, you fuel yourself to go harder than before. 

You’re seventeen when you meet Hinata Shoyo and before your mind vaguely registers why it was a familiar name, you see how your orange flowers are supposed to look like. You see skin tanner than yours, with flowers orange like yours but _brighter_ and larger. Your eyes involuntarily trail down and you see your hydrangeas beginning to bloom on another pair of legs and you realize, _oh_ , maybe you have the flower of waiting because your soulmate is younger. It slips your mind that you both have to be sixteen to see your flowers in bloom after all.

You see wonder in his eyes as he sees as he sees his orange flower on your arm, focusing specifically on the one large flower on the back of your hand. You hear him gasp as he sees your—his—hydrangeas on you and you wonder if that’s what you looked like too a few seconds ago.

None of you bring it up, and neither do your companions. Instead, you two face off by a t-shirt stand and glare at each other before Hirugami drags you away. 

Later on, you see him watch you from afar as you get interviewed and play a match. You watch him watch you with wonder in his eyes, similar to what he wore when he saw your—his—orange flowers. Except this look had more to it, something you can’t place—it was wistful, yet challenging. It ignited a fire in you that burned bright and threatened to consume you. It felt like a challenge and an acknowledgement, and you reveled in excitement of facing a worthy opponent. 

You watch whatever matches of his you can find. You wonder if he’s as used to the orange flower on his hand monopolizing his attention sometimes when he plays.

* * *

Before the game even starts, some people begin whispering about you two. You can feel the pointing and the wonder in their eyes, and you’ve never been more glad to be a volleyball idiot until then. You revel in praise and proving people wrong, but right now, you push a lot of the noise out and focus on the game. 

You feel the hunger from the crows, and you know that hunger yourself; you feel it, _have_ felt it yourself, and will keep feeling it to an extent even as you grow along the way. You know their hunger, and you know that hungry people, hungry crows, can be vicious when needed. And across the net, you see an orange head, and orange-covered arms, and white-covered ankles. He looks just as hungry as the others, but also excited.

You know then you need all your focus for this match. And you do just that.

As the game goes along, more and more people begin to take notice of you two. But you don’t care. You’re too focused on the game, proving yourself like you always do, but you admit this time is a bit more fun than others.

It's an experience seeing–playing–with someone who practically mirrors you yet is so _different_ from you, so you don't pay attention to the whispers and eyes; you're too focused watching the orange on your hand clash with your skin, and you see how it matches the orange speckled arm across the court perfectly. 

You think the orange matches his hair. You wonder if he thinks the white hydrangeas match yours. 

You play and play and the feeling is...different. He's not your first nor will he be your last opponent, but you want to keep playing with him anyway. Against him, for him, with him. You can’t stop the grin that overtakes your face as the game goes along.

But then it's over all too soon. Your grin is falling as he's falling to the ground and his—your—orange meets wood. You watch him struggle to get up, fighting the sudden natural instinct to help him up and you feel something tug at your heartstrings. You watch as he is sat down on their bench and a timeout is called, and you watch him struggle to hold in tears as his teacher kneels in front of him.

He’s whisked away for a checkup and you move away from your team just a little bit..Your right arm and shoulder starts to burn with the force of a thousand needles pricking and before you can stop yourself, you yell at his retreating figure:

"Hinata Shoyo!” You breathe out, then breathe in again. Then, even louder, you boom, “I'll be waiting for you!"

* * *

And you do.

* * *

You turn eighteen, nineteen, twenty. What you thought were long three years as a thirteen year old passed by.

You wait six years.

It wasn’t as long as you thought it would be. 

The orange flowers bloom fully when you're eighteen. You check his social media pictures and, against his tanner skin, you see that you finally match his arm, inch by inch. 

They bloom at eighteen, but they don't _feel_ like it until you’re twenty three and you’re officially the little giant of your generation. They don’t feel bloomed enough until you hear of his return and his allegiance to your rival team, and until you see him across the court once again.

You see the fully bloomed white flowers on Hinata’s ankles the day of the Jackals vs Adlers match, and you know your skin well enough to know that he, too, has matched you pace by pace the same way you did to him. You wonder if this was a weird symbolism of your journey as sworn rivals, both little giants in your own respective ways yet so different, so contrasting like white and orange.

You wonder what really is causing your heart to beat the way it’s doing right now, and you wonder if the warmth in your chest is from the flowers or from the game. You don’t hate it though; you take in the warmth, you turn it into power, into drive, and you bask in it and feel fulfilled and excited in a way unknown to you—strange, but pleasant and welcome. 

As you watch him soar through the air and dig for receives, you wonder if he feels the same.

When he wins and boasts about his win to your teammate, his former setter, you think how fitting it is for you two to be bonded like this.

With trumpet vines—waiting—and six years. With white hydrangeas that symbolized vanity and arrogance. With both of these sets inked on your skin forever, you wonder about how almost everything seemed to slot into place now that you’ve had your fated confrontation, both of you standing as winners on that court.

Everything finally clicks into a complete piece when you two finally stand on the same side of the court. You wear the same red jerseys, and on the court, you view the net from the same point of view. You watch with wonder as finally, you get to see a different perspective to his jump that’s so similar yet different to yours. You wonder if he thinks the same about you as you obviously challenge the opponent and subtly challenge him with your jump.

You relish in how there's more orange in your immediate line of sight now—while blocking, serving, and receiving. 

When you step in front of him and leap into the air, you wonder if he feels the same with white.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ik there's errors and run on sentences but in my defense i believe hoshiumi thinks in run on sentences a lot ahahaha
> 
> thanks for dropping by!! :D <3 stay hydrated and safe yall!
> 
> check out the official hoshihinaweek twt [here](https://twitter.com/HoshihinaWeek)!! pls join us scream abt hshn hehehe
> 
> hmu on twt: @sagikaashi
> 
> have a gr9 day ahead!!!


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